Post Food Critic Still Eating Heartily

Did you hear that the Post-Dispatch fired its restaurant critic – Joe Bonwich – Friday? So did we.

"It was my Mark Twain moment," says Bonwich, who is definitely still eating and drinking on the daily's dime.

Bonwich tells Riverfront Times he chose a most inopportune time Friday to go hunting for some organic vodka. Bonwich walked out of 900 North Tucker mid-morning, alongside several people who’d been laid off and escorted out – right when Mike Owens, investigative reporter at NewsChannel 5 (KSDK-TV), was gathering material about the Post’s lay-offs for an evening news story.

Bonwich had no idea he was rumored to have been axed until that evening.

"A little before five, I was driving home and my phone exploded," recounts Bonwich. "I had six or seven phone calls in a row, one from the woman I work for, Judy Evans, and who said, 'KSDK is reporting that you got laid off.'

I called [Owens] up when I got home and he’d already retracted it by then, and was exceptionally apologetic.